Top 3 Ultra Portable Laptop Previews

Ok. So I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I'm getting one of the new Macbook Air's. But it got me thinking, there are definitely some other choices when it comes to the ultra portable laptop market. And some of them give Apple a run for their money, especially when it comes to price. So I've basically narrowed it down to 3 possible choices; the Macbook Air, the Lenovo IdeaPAd U260, and the Asus UL30Vt. Let the battle Royale commence.

First up is the 13 inch Macbook Air. The new 2010 Macbook air model is more stylish then ever but also more powerful then ever. They sport Core 2 Duo Processors, up to 4gb of ram, a 13 inch led lit monitor, and it is definitely the sexiest of the 3. It's just 0.11 inches at it's thinnest and 0.68 inches at the thickest part of the laptop. Now because of this super small frame they made some sacrifices in the performance department.

The Core 2 Duo is only up to 2.13 ghz which isn't that bad. It comes with 2gb ram standard but you can spend an extra 100 to get the 4gb. Also, there is only 2 usb ports and a mini display port on the 11 inch model. The 13 inch has an sd card slot. The screen however is absolutely gorgeous. It has a resolution of 1440x900 which quite uncommon on screens of this size and seems to pack more pixels per inch then any other laptop.

As far as storage goes, Apple opted to go with flash storage of up to 256gb. This is plenty of space and ensures that your boot times and program load ups will be lighting fast. The 13 inch model is rated to last up to 7 hours as far as battery life is concerned which is plenty enough. A huge con however is the lack of a backlit keyboard which is something that is standard on every other Macbook. The 128gb 13 inch model starts at $1299.00 on Apple's website.

Next is the Lenovo IdeaPad U260. This laptop was just recently released and is looking on paper like a strong competitor in the ultra portable market. It has Intel Core ULV i3 and i5 processors which certainly packs a punch. It has a 12.5 inch LED display and weighs about 3 pounds at only 0.71 inches thick. There is only two USB ports however, and no sd card slot.

It's got built in bluetooth, 4gbs of ram and a 320gb hdd. You also get some pretty uniqute color choices like the orange seen above. There is no straight black however which is a downer. The biggest bummer about this laptop however is the battery life. The weakling 4 cell battery only provides up to 4 hours of battery life according to Lenovo which makes this a hard little laptop to root for.

Being as it's so new and not even for sale yet not much more is known about this little guy. No word on price yet. Wait for some official reviews before committing to this one.

Last is the Asus UL30Vt. This powerful beast has been out for some time and has made itself a very popular choice among the thin and light community. It's a 13.3 inch laptop with a relatively small frame. It's 0.98 inches thick and has a chicklet style backlit keyboard. Built in Altec Lansing speakers. The resolution on the LED color shine screen is 1366x768.

Performance wise, for such a small laptop this thing is a beast. It has 1.3ghz under-clocked Intel Core 2 Duo. 4gb of DDr3 ram standard, and a 500gb sata hard drive. It has a Nvidia G210m  mobile graphics chip with 512 on dedicated ddr3 ram as well as Intel's built in GMA 4500MHD mobile VGA. They are switchable;so that means when you need the heavy graphics power the Nvidia chip can handle such as games, you can just switch it on. And when you don't, just switch is off again, saving on battery life.

It sports bluetooh, a .3 mega pixel webcam and a 64 bit windows 7 standard. Now here is where it gets crazy. This thing has up to 11 hours of battery life. Ridiculous. Plenty of jacks too, 3 usb ports, 1 vga port and 1 hdmi port, and also a 4 in1 card reader. This laptop is going for only $699.99 right now on Amazon.